Cheena massage post

"Come girl, 30 minutes for $25. It's very good."

With that, I nodded my head numbly and followed him into the shop, past the make shift curtains where I was left to wait for my server. It all felt kinda dodgy, but I needed it. I needed a massage.

And what's a girl to do when she wants a good no frills massage in Singapore? Obviously, all these hoity toity spas are out of the question for me, and massage classifieds in IS magazine seems to be flogging massages for men only ( think: Silk Stockings massages.. YES! Our masseuse comes in silk stockings!) *shudder* and what about all these 'Health Centres" with tinted glasses? *Double shudder*

But fuckit.. I was desperate.. and in my desperation I headed out to People's Park Centre where I faintly remembered some news about the proliferation of massage joints in recent months. There would be at least one decent joint providing what I was looking for. And no one wanted to join me.. except Applecow, but she had just returned from a field trip and couldn't get away. Harrumph.

Anyway, I made my way to People's Park centre, determined to find the least sleazy place and came across the first one "Teochew Ming Chinese Tui Na and Accupuncture" It looked alright.. nice open beaded curtains (with Panda pattern somemore!), and the man who attended to me didn't have permed hair, a moustache nor tattoos... so I thought, "what the hell.. might as well go for this one"

I was brought round the corner to another part of the establishment, and the uncle whipped aside a filmsy curtain divider and showed me into a small room. And I mean reaally reaally tiny. It had a bed, and while he went away to get my masseuse, I took the opportunity to check if the towels were clean. What if they give *gasp*'special' services? YIKES!!! But it looked ok. the good morning towels were a little threadbare, but clean. The partition was illumminated by a single orange bulb and there was toiletries and powder on a rack nailed to the wall. No alarm bells rang so I just sat and waited and examined acupoints posters plastered on the partition. A middle aged chinese lady came in after 5 minutes and we got down to business, although I was apprehensive and taking off my top literally in the middle of the shopping complex. That I did, but not without plotting emergency evacuation plans. As soon as the massage started all these thoughts flew out of the window.

It was soooo gooooooood.

I really needed someone to hack away at my stiff knotted up muscles and shoulder blades, and my god, the lady did a helluva good job. Oh yes.. no tailored 'aromatherapy oils' to suit your mood either. Everyone gets a good dousing of Johnson's baby oil. Cheap and good. I would have fallen asleep if I were at some posh place playing zen mood music, but because of my environs, I resolved not to. Anyone who knows me decently would know that I'm a super sleeper. I can get into REM sleep in just under 5 minutes! Fortunately, I was aided along by the background music of choice, courtesy of the electronics shop next door. A bopping disco medley of 60s and 70s oldies. Think Lobo melding into Abba followed by Petula Clark and back to some cheesy big haired, gold medallioned disco dude. All with the same upbeat disco-rock tempo. Hahaha. Halfway through, the DJ put on some Hokkien karaoke, but I guess it was driving the customers away, so back to the disco medley it was. If I wasn't so relaxed and at the mercy of the masseuse, I would have been laughing my head off at the hilarity of the situation.

30 minutes went by too soon, and before long, my session was over. No more aches, and the headache that was bugging me all day went away miraculously. I was almost sorry it was coming to an end.

Would I come back again? Defintely! The uncle promised me a free! sesssion if I came back 10 times! Foot reflexology, anyone? Mingko? ;)

Boring book club part 2

New books! Wheee!

What I'm currently reading for the months of June and July. I picked up the Richard Dawkin's book yesterday at my favorite bookshop, Kinokuniya. It's been a long time since I went on a book buying excercise, and I was further seduced by Zee's 20% membership discount. Even though I was dead beat when I got home yesterday, I managed to get 3 chapters out of it and eventually slept at 1am.

The other one, the Molecular Markers, Natural History and Evolution is supposedly an investment towards my academic career, seeing that the science library doesn't stock it, and I want my own copy so I can highlight and make notations on the margins to my heart's content!

More bedtime reading!!! Oh, I am a happy person!

Senseless killings

I saw this advertisement at a bus stop the other night. It caught my eye, having the eye catching "Insects of the World". It had pictures of various insects and a short paragraph about them. Whether they were pests or harmless. Very educational, I thought. Imagine every one giving it the once over while waiting for their bus. You learn something new everday.

Then my eyes dropped lower and I saw the Baygone can! and the slogan, Baygone kills, kills, kills.

Oh Lordy
I hope it doesn't get people assosciating any insect witht the thought "kill with Baygone!" Although I have a sneaky suspicion that's what the advertising people want to achieve.

What a sweetheart!

What a sweetheart!
Originally uploaded by island_girl.

Blogging from Flickr

For some reason I really like this shot
Originally uploaded by island_girl.

Must put what I learnt to good use!

And all you voyeurs out there have got one more spot to snoop.

My Flickr photo page.

Attack of the mini spider crab

This is what happens when you give some plastic toys to a bunch of unsocialised carcinologists. hehehe


The world's smallest Macrocheira kaempferi tries to escape by jumping on my face.

Blogging TA

Today, Otterman had a blogging workshop for some civil servants from various government agencies..and.. I was roped in to be the TA. ME! TA! I can't even put up a freakin site meter myself!

Anyway, I sat next to Sundraes from MICA. and learnt quite a fair bit myself too!



Like, actually uploading photos onto Flickr, actually setting up a sitemeter. I guess I can't say I'm 'clueless' anymore. No excuses!

Night cycling

For the longest time, N and CK were asking me if I wanted to go night cycling with them, and for the longest time, it never did materialise. It wasn't as if I played them out time and again, but its was just plain loads of talk and no action.

Well... a year after the idea of cycling together was mooted, it finally happened yesterday. N, CK R and I went out for a spin on our bikes. As I was supposed to meet CK at Hup Leong, I decided to take the road bike. My tires were deflated from months of neglect and I can take this opportunity to get the boss to help change my seat. I've got a snazzy new Biolink one, given to me by my Hunt on Wheels team mates.

I met CK first, and we rode towards East Coast Park, where the otehr two will show up. Uneventful ride, except I lost him once, and we made a wrong turn and ended up on Mounbatten instead of Fort Road. Riding along the bicycle path at the Park, I looked at all the activities generated around the barbeque pit and thought to myself, wow its been 10 years since I had one of those East Coast Park BBQ things. JC was the height of activities like these. BBQs and chalets every holiday with the whole class invited. It was fun, but these days I'd rather stay in the lab and have a makan/drinking session with some other postgrads. Maybe I'm getting old.

We met up and had dinner at the ECP food centre. Pretty decent food too! I think it'll be worth it to take the bike out and ride to this place for makan regularly, but alas, I have no one to con to be my partner in crime. R was late; his tires were flat too, and none of the bicycle shops near his place were open past 8 and the petrol kiosk air pump was broken. He didn't makan, and as we finished, we planned the route. As R and I were going back to the lab, and R had just come from Pasir Ris, We decided to hit town. Geylang actually. To eat tau huay. Really! And here's the proof!


Mr Pangolin Man, Limestone hill snail man and TMSI soon to be mangrove snake guy

Next stop was Mustafa centra at Little India, and I made a detour to Dunlop Street to check out some backpackers lodge for Celine, who will be visiting me in September. I had initially asked A if he had an extra room for rent at his place but it turned out the spare room is now a dusty store room. So to the backpacker's place she'll have to go then.

Next stop was Bencoolen Street where we had mutton murtabak and talked some more, before it was time to go on to the last stretch at Bukit Timah and split with everyone. I reckoned this was a slack ride, more like zendogs style since they were riding from makan point to makan point. I was happy to pedal along, but the guys weren't happy about not breaking into a sweat, so Bukit Timah was to be the cheong leg. We finally split and I took R back to Nus along the very pleasant Coronation Road West route that Otterman led me just a few days ago.

Ride over, we hung around the lab and talked somemore while cooling down. Interesting conversation fodder, but unfortunately, I undid all that 'hard' work by downing a pint of ice cold Irish stout post ride, as well as munch on kachang and later in the night, shared a cup noodle with R. I'll pay for it later when I can't fit into my outfit for Charlotte's wedding!

10th SAFRA Runway cycling

With LHam's return from Finalnd looming on the horizon, I decided to take part in my first ever SAFRA organised Runway cycling event held at the Paya Lebar Airport.

This being my first time, I didn't know what to expect, how to get there, and who else was coming besides Otterman, since not much was mentioned on the WAT list. The night before, still having no clue, I txted Otterman to get the details for the meeting point and all that. His route wasn't going to cross with mine at any point till the Airport, so I had to figure it out myself. Luckily, I found a very straightfoward route... just follow the route for SBS bus 80 which comes by my place! But it still took me a long time with my ah pek riding style. Good thing Otterman, Airani and KMY were late as well.

Some pictures I grabbed from Otterman's blog, there's a link to the full picture gallery too.


Clearly, I'm not a morning person.


I brightened up considerably after finding out from Airani that she knows a good prata place nearby. That's lunch in the bag! An otterman look-alike lurks in the background. hehehe. PS expertise courtesy of Otterman. Its too high level for me!


This taken by fellow rider Kevin when KMY made a pit stop.



Apparently, its the first time in seven years there was rain during the event. Dark clouds were already looming as we were lining up at the frontline and we made some sort of plans for lightning evacuation (conclusion - hang around someone taller than you are!!!). The rain started barely 5 minutes into flag-off and there was a torrential downpour for 10 minutes or so. A double rainbow emerged behind one of the hangars and it was a beautiful sight. No pictures of that though.. pity.

Airani and I rode 15km while Otterman and KMY did 30km. Whilst waiting for their return, we ate ice cream, watched some performances put up by the SAF music and drama company. This being multi-racial Singapore, there items in all the four major languages! English song and dance, Chinese song and dance, Indian song and dance, followed by Malay song and dance. The Chinese song was quite jarring, and I quickly abandoned the stage front to find Airani, who was looking at the Aircraft displays they put up. The highlight of the day was supposed to be the lucky draw, but none of us won anything. :/ However, we made up for that by adjourning for lunch at some coffeeshop near Lor Ah Soo and in true Zendogs style, relak-ed one corner - literally! and talked for so long that I didn't feel like riding back to the lab anymore. But rode I did, albeit very slowly. I'll be back next year!

say what you want

I happened to take a look at the latest issue of campus propaganda, (cue booming voice) "THE KNOWLEDGE ENTERPRISE".

The last page caught my eye. It was titled NUS high students are tops at Topping-Out Ceremony.

Anything wrong with it? Well... good for you if you've got it figured out. But what is a Topping-Out Ceremony? Its so.... concrete... like TOP of flat or whatever. The full name of the even was the NUS high school inaugural Speech Day and Topping-out Ceremony. Sheesh. Maybe my mission school upbringing has only familiarised myself with Founders' Day. I think in JC, we had Speech Day in place of Founder's Day, but Topping-out ceremony? What's that about? Sounds like an indulgent self pat on the back to me.

Is it an Americanism?

For the benefit of da monkey...

Is that you in N. America? Or someone else? *gasp*

P.S I nair use PhotoShop ok? You know I'm a PS retard. :P

Sitemeter up

It's been 18 hours since my sitemeter was put up by SS. We were talking about blogging and the expedition in general and about how I usually have 3 readers. You know who you are. hur hur hur.

A quick look after lunch revealed this time zone map..



so now I know I have more than 3 readers!! yay! and of course, the bar languishing in Europe/Africa must be Mr LHam. No surprises for the bar in Singapore cos that's me clicking on the blog every now and then for want of anything to do. And i have someone popping in from W. Australia/Vietnam/Indonesia/China! Say hi sometime! Or maybe it was a mistake.. but drop a line anyway!

Madagascar was a let down, through no fault of the movie. I caught the 2.30 screening at Jade 1 and soon after the opening credits, I realised something was amiss, though I could not put a finger to it. The movie was running along fine, no jerks, Alex the lion came in togehter with the rest of the zoo gang. 15 minutes later, I found myself squinting. That's it. The movie was too dark! It didn't have the nice rich palette of colours that a cartoon was supposed to have. Everythng looked dim, and I was positive it wasn't supposed to be like that.

Walked out and told the usher and he said he would do something about it. No improvement, but because the next half hour of the movie took place in NYC at night, I wasn't sure if it was the film itself or the projector. It was the projector. Unable to take it any longer, I had to walk out and get my refund back from the box office, and the auntie there directed me to the manager who was nowhere to be found. Eventually I spoke with him on the phone and he acknowledged the problem. As it turned out, one of the projector bulbs blew, and they could not increase the wattage for the reamaining bulbs in case it went too. I got my money back, and thought about going back into the cinema to tell the rest that they didn't have to pay $9.50 to squint throughout a movie. But the manager was already at the door to the cinema when I got there, so it was not possible for me to go in and tell the others. They weren't planning to do so either. As far as they're concerned, if someone's sat through the entire movie, they are not eligible for refund. I think that's kinda sneaky. After all, with the recent hike in prices, screen operaters have an obligation to ensure that their patrons get their money's worth. I sat through 45 minutes and hardly got a joke because it was just too distracting. half the time I was trying to make out shapes on the screen. I got my money back, but the rest of them won't. I think I'll just wait for the VCD to be released or maybe even a few years later when they decide to screen it on telly. I'm in no hurry. The first 45 minutes didn't impress me anyway.

I'm just back from Panglao 2005, give me a couple of days to sort out the pictures and I'll put something up, either here or in the museum news site.

In the meantime, here's a group photo.




It's been a fruitful and profitable trip, aside from the whole expedition experience of dredging, trawling, sorting and the general camaraderie. I also met Prof (Simon) Tillier, who spent time with me almost every other night, discussing my dissertation with me. This one, I totally didn't expect. I guess I'm generally lucky that way. Meeting very kind people who go out of their way to talk to me about my work as a fledgling scientist. It was also nice to see Yuri and Bertrand again. I think there are plans for me to go aboard an expedition cruise in Vanuatu later this year, but nothing's fixed yet. We'll see.